Looks like someone is being a bit of a sore loser. Former Colorado state Sen. Angela Giron (D-Pueblo) joins fellow Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) in blaming voter suppression for her ousting from the Colorado state Senate after a recall election earlier this week.
Giron appeared on CNN “Newsroom” on Thursday afternoon, speaking about the recall election that left her and Colorado state Senate President John Morse (D-Colorado Springs) jobless. The Pueblo senator recognized the National Rifle Association — which backed the recall effort — played a part in her ousting, but said it was really voter suppression that drove the two Democrats from office.
“We know what really happened here,” Giron said. “I mean yes, we had the strong NRA … but really, what this story really is about, it’s about voter suppression. When Colorado has voted by mail, 70 percent of Coloradoans vote my mail, and we didn’t have access to that mail ballot.”
Colorado held a recall election after voters rose up in a grassroots effort against both Giron and Morse. Both state senators backed gun control legislation and received substantial funding from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Their efforts were not well-received by constituents, which Giron failed to acknowledge even after prodding from CNN host Suzanne Malveaux.
“I’m telling you what happened,” she continued. “Is that you had only 30,000 of the voters who in the last election — off-year election was 45,000 — so you have the people that are in support of very common sense gun legislation weren’t able to get to the polls. … I mean we have to call it for what it is. … There was voter confusion.”
Girot joins the ranks of Democratic National Committee Chair Wasserman Schultz, who blamed the two Democrats’ loss on voter suppression earlier this week.
The Florida Senator claimed the late announcement of polling locations and lawsuits filed by gun control opponents led to wins from Girot and Morse’s Republican counterparts.
“The recall elections in Colorado were defined by the vast array of obstacles that special interests threw in the way of voters for the purpose of reversing the will of the legislature and the people. This was voter suppression, pure and simple,” she wrote in a statement.
Wasserman Schultz received backlash from Republicans on Twitter after she continued her voter suppression claim on the site and blasted an email to DNC supporters Thursday night asking for their backing in a project to “protect voting rights.”
“Yesterday, I tweeted about how people had a hard time voting in the Colorado recall election, and wow did the Republicans blow up my Twitter feed. They think that Democrats are angry because ‘dead people and illegal aliens’ weren’t allowed to vote,” she wrote. “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed.”
Watch Girot push Wasserman Shultz’s voter suppression rhetoric below.
h/t The Hill
